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144-472: The Easter Bunny (also called the Easter Rabbit or Easter Hare ) is a folkloric figure and symbol of Easter , depicted as a rabbit —sometimes dressed with clothes—bringing Easter eggs . Originating among German Lutherans , the "Easter Hare" originally played the role of a judge, evaluating whether children were good or disobedient in behavior at the start of the season of Eastertide , similar to

288-463: A street culture outside the purview of adults. This is also ideal where it needs to be collected; as Iona and Peter Opie demonstrated in their pioneering book Children's Games in Street and Playground . Here the social group of children is studied on its own terms, not as a derivative of adult social groups. It is shown that the culture of children is quite distinctive; it is generally unnoticed by

432-529: A German tradition of an Easter Hare bringing eggs for the children. The hare was a popular motif in medieval church art. In ancient times, it was widely believed (as by Pliny , Plutarch , Philostratus , and Aelian ) that the hare was a hermaphrodite . The idea that a hare could reproduce without loss of virginity led to an association with the Virgin Mary , with hares sometimes occurring in illuminated manuscripts and Northern European paintings of

576-472: A Proto-Indo-European * h a éusōs 'goddess of dawn' who was characterized as a 'reluctant' bringer of light for which she is punished. In three of the Indo-European stocks, Baltic , Greek and Indo-Iranian , the existence of a Proto-Indo-European 'goddess of the dawn' is given additional linguistic support in that she is designated the 'daughter of heaven'." Additionally, scholars have linked

720-432: A binary: one individual or group who actively transmits information in some form to another individual or group. Each of these is a defined role in the folklore process. The tradition-bearer is the individual who actively passes along the knowledge of an artifact; this can be either a mother singing a lullaby to her baby, or an Irish dance troupe performing at a local festival. They are named individuals, usually well known in

864-564: A book in German and later quoted by H. Krebs in a notes section in the journal Folk-Lore , also in 1883. His quote is as follows: Some time ago the question was raised how it came that, according to South German still prevailing folk-lore, the Hare is believed by children to lay the Easter-eggs. I venture now to offer a probable answer to it. Originally the hare seems to have been a bird which

1008-408: A child's birthday party, including verbal lore ( Happy Birthday song ), material lore (presents and a birthday cake), special games ( Musical chairs ) and individual customs (making a wish as you blow out the candles). Each of these is a folklore artifact in its own right, potentially worthy of investigation and cultural analysis. Together they combine to build the custom of a birthday party celebration,

1152-489: A community. Many objects of material folklore are challenging to classify, difficult to archive, and unwieldy to store. The assigned task of museums is to preserve and make use of these bulky artifacts of material culture. To this end, the concept of the living museum has developed, beginning in Scandinavia at the end of the 19th century. These open-air museums not only display the artifacts, but also teach visitors how

1296-418: A comparison with the goddess Rheda , also attested by Bede. In 2011 Philip A. Shaw wrote that the subject has seen "a lengthy history of arguments for and against Bede's goddess Ēostre, with some scholars taking fairly extreme positions on either side" and that some theories against the goddess have gained popular cultural prominence. Shaw noted that "much of this debate, however, was conducted in ignorance of

1440-537: A descendant of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) * h₂ews-reh₂ (cf. Lithuanian auš(t)rà , 'dawn, daybreak'), extended from the PIE root * h₂ews- , meaning 'to shine, glow (red)'. The modern English east also derives from this root, via the Proto-Germanic adverb * aust(e)raz ('east, eastwards'), from an earlier PIE * h₂ews-tero- ('east, towards the dawn'). According to linguist Guus Kroonen,

1584-524: A female version would have been * Austra , yet that the High German and Saxon peoples seem to have only formed Ostarâ and Eástre , feminine, and not Ostaro and Eástra , masculine. Grimm additionally speculates on the nature of the goddess and surviving folk customs that may have been associated with her in Germany: Ostara , Eástre seems therefore to have been

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1728-511: A functional interpretation of the available evidence and concluded that "the etymological connections of her name suggests that her worshippers saw her geographical and social relationship with them as more central than any functions she may have had". In a 2022 paper published in Folklore , scholar Richard Sermon rejects Shaw's proposal that Ēostre was a localized goddess. Sermon takes particular issue with Shaw's rejection of an association with

1872-517: A goddess called * Austrō(n) in the Proto-Germanic language has been examined in detail since the foundation of Germanic philology in the 19th century by scholar Jacob Grimm and others. As the Germanic languages descend from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), historical linguists have traced the name to a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn * H₂ewsṓs , from which may descend

2016-575: A key piece of evidence, as it was not discovered until 1958. This evidence is furnished by over 150 Romano-Germanic votive inscriptions to deities named the matronae Austriahenae , found near Morken-Harff and datable to around 150–250 AD". Most of these inscriptions are in an incomplete state, yet most are complete enough for reasonable clarity of the inscriptions. As early as 1966 scholars have linked these names etymologically with Ēostre and an element found in Germanic personal names. Shaw argued against

2160-417: A name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre , in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance. Before the discovery of the matronae Austriahenae in 1958, scholarship on this topic frequently raised

2304-516: A problem to be solved, but as a tremendous opportunity. In the diversity of American folklife, we find a marketplace teeming with the exchange of traditional forms and cultural ideas, a rich resource for Americans". This diversity is celebrated annually at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and many other folklife fests around the country. There are numerous other definitions. According to William Bascom major article on

2448-605: A scripted combination of multiple artifacts which have meaning within their social group. Folklorists divide customs into several different categories. A custom can be a seasonal celebration , such as Thanksgiving or New Year's . It can be a life cycle celebration for an individual, such as baptism, birthday or wedding. A custom can also mark a community festival or event; examples of this are Carnival in Cologne or Mardi Gras in New Orleans . This category also includes

2592-509: A shift in purpose and meaning. There are many reasons for continuing to handmake objects for use, for example these skills may be needed to repair manufactured items, or a unique design might be required which is not (or cannot be) found in the stores. Many crafts are considered as simple home maintenance, such as cooking, sewing and carpentry. For many people, handicrafts have also become an enjoyable and satisfying hobby. Handmade objects are often regarded as prestigious, where extra time and thought

2736-426: A small sampling of objects and skills that are included in studies of material culture. Customary culture is remembered enactment, i.e. re-enactment. It is the patterns of expected behavior within a group, the "traditional and expected way of doing things" A custom can be a single gesture , such as thumbs down or a handshake . It can also be a complex interaction of multiple folk customs and artifacts as seen in

2880-450: A social event during the winter months, or the gifting of a quilt to signify the importance of the event. Each of these—the traditional pattern chosen, the social event, and the gifting—occur within the broader context of the community. Even so, when considering context, the structure and characteristics of performance can be recognized, including an audience, a framing event, and the use of decorative figures and symbols, all of which go beyond

3024-400: A swell in popular interest in folk traditions, these community celebrations are becoming more numerous throughout the western world. While ostensibly parading the diversity of their community, economic groups have discovered that these folk parades and festivals are good for business. All shades of people are out on the streets, eating, drinking and spending. This attracts support not only from

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3168-572: A whole, even as it continues to be a point of discussion within the field itself. The term folkloristics , along with the alternative name folklore studies , became widely used in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. When the American Folklife Preservation Act (Public Law 94-201) was passed by the U.S. Congress in January 1976, to coincide with

3312-492: Is "not idle speculation… Decades of fieldwork have demonstrated conclusively that these groups do have their own folklore." In this modern understanding, folklore is a function of shared identity within any social group. This folklore can include jokes, sayings, and expected behavior in multiple variants, always transmitted in an informal manner. For the most part, it will be learned by observation, imitation, repetition, or correction by other group members. This informal knowledge

3456-511: Is a West Germanic spring goddess. The name is reflected in Old English : * Ēastre ( [ˈæːɑstre] ; Northumbrian dialect : Ēastro , Mercian and West Saxon dialects: Ēostre [ˈeːostre] ), Old High German : * Ôstara , and Old Saxon : * Āsteron . By way of the Germanic month bearing her name (Northumbrian: Ēosturmōnaþ , West Saxon: Ēastermōnaþ ; Old High German: Ôstarmânoth ), she

3600-457: Is a distinct branch of folklore that deals with activities passed on by children to other children, away from the influence or supervision of an adult. Children's folklore contains artifacts from all the standard folklore genres of verbal, material, and customary lore; it is however the child-to-child conduit that distinguishes these artifacts. For childhood is a social group where children teach, learn and share their own traditions, flourishing in

3744-536: Is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family. " This expanded social definition of folk supports a broader view of the material, i.e., the lore, considered to be folklore artifacts . These now include all "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)". Folklore are no longer considered to be limited to that which

3888-400: Is also transmitted within a group, remains a practical hygiene and health issue and does not rise to the level of a group-defining tradition. Tradition is initially remembered behavior; once it loses its practical purpose, there is no reason for further transmission unless it has been imbued with meaning beyond the initial practicality of the action. This meaning is at the core of folkloristics,

4032-485: Is as close as folklorists can come to observing the transmission and social function of this folk knowledge before the spread of literacy during the 19th century. As we have seen with the other genres, the original collections of children's lore and games in the 19th century was driven by a fear that the culture of childhood would die out. Early folklorists, among them Alice Gomme in Britain and William Wells Newell in

4176-515: Is called folklore studies or folkloristics, and it can be explored at the undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. levels. The word folklore , a compound of folk and lore , was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms , who contrived the term as a replacement for the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature". The second half of the word, lore , comes from Old English lār 'instruction'. It

4320-595: Is celebrated at the spring equinox . Because she brings renewal, rebirth from the death of winter, some Heathens associate Ēostre with Iðunn , keeper of the apples of youth in Scandinavian mythology ". In the first season of the TV series American Gods , based on the novel of the same name , Ostara is portrayed by Kristin Chenoweth . In the series, Ostara has survived into the modern age by forming an alliance with

4464-404: Is enmeshed in a multitude of differing identities and their concomitant social groups. The first group that each of us is born into is the family, and each family has its own unique family folklore . As a child grows into an individual, its identities also increase to include age, language, ethnicity, occupation, etc. Each of these cohorts has its own folklore, and as one folklorist points out, this

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4608-541: Is found in an issue of the Journal of American Folklore , published in 1975, which is dedicated exclusively to articles on women's folklore, with approaches that had not come from a man's perspective. Other groups that were highlighted as part of this broadened understanding of the folk group were non-traditional families , occupational groups, and families that pursued the production of folk items over multiple generations. Folklorist Richard Dorson explained in 1976 that

4752-451: Is found in hex signs on Pennsylvania Dutch barns, tin man sculptures made by metalworkers, front yard Christmas displays, decorated school lockers, carved gun stocks, and tattoos. "Words such as naive, self-taught, and individualistic are used to describe these objects, and the exceptional rather than the representative creation is featured." This is in contrast to the understanding of folklore artifacts that are nurtured and passed along within

4896-439: Is generally accepted as a genuine pagan goddess among modern scholars. Ēostre and Ostara are sometimes referenced in modern popular culture and are venerated in some forms of Germanic neopaganism . The theonyms * Ēastre ( Old English ) and * Ôstara ( Old High German ) are cognates – linguistic siblings stemming from a common origin. They derive from the Proto-Germanic theonym * Austrō(n) , itself

5040-552: Is inclined to agree with Grimm, that it would be uncritical to saddle this eminent Father of the Church, who keeps Heathendom at arms' length and tells us less of than he knows, with the invention of this goddess." Billson pointed out that the Christianization of England started at the end of the 6th century, and, by the 7th, was completed. Billson argued that, as Bede was born in 672, Bede must have had opportunities to learn

5184-493: Is inexplicable to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara; just as there is a hare on the statue of Abnoba ." Citing folk Easter customs in Leicestershire , England, where "the profits of the land called Harecrop Leys were applied to providing a meal which was thrown on the ground at the 'Hare-pie Bank'", late 19th-century scholar Charles Isaac Elton speculated on a connection between these customs and

5328-559: Is intended to organize and categorize the folklore artifacts; they provide common vocabulary and consistent labeling for folklorists to communicate with each other. That said, each artifact is unique; in fact, one of the characteristics of all folklore artifacts is their variation within genres and types. This is in direct contrast to manufactured goods, where the goal in production is to create identical products, and any variations are considered mistakes. It is, however, just this required variation that makes identification and classification of

5472-458: Is mostly found in the plural, because two days   [...] were kept at Easter. This Ostarâ , like the [Anglo-Saxon] Eástre , must in heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the Christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries. Grimm notes that "all of the nations bordering on us have retained

5616-588: Is no evidence to connect the tradition of Easter eggs with Ostara. Eggs became a symbol in Christianity associated with rebirth as early as the 1st century CE, via the iconography of the Phoenix egg. D'Costa theorizes that eggs became associated with Easter specifically in medieval Europe, when eating them was prohibited during the fast of Lent . D'Costa highlights that a common practice in England at that time

5760-525: Is not just any conversation, but words and phrases conforming to a traditional configuration recognized by both the speaker and the audience. For narrative types , by definition, they have a consistent structure and follow an existing model in their narrative form. As just one simple example, in English, the phrase "An elephant walks into a bar…" instantaneously flags the following text as a joke . It might be one you have already heard, but it might be one that

5904-411: Is old or obsolete. These folk artifacts continue to be passed along informally, as a rule anonymously, and always in multiple variants. The folk group is not individualistic; it is community-based and nurtures its lore in community. "As new groups emerge, new folklore is created… surfers, motorcyclists, computer programmers ". In direct contrast to high culture , where any single work of a named artist

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6048-434: Is protected by copyright law , folklore is a function of shared identity within a common social group. Having identified folk artifacts, the professional folklorist strives to understand the significance of these beliefs, customs, and objects for the group, since these cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within the group. That meaning can, however, shift and morph; for example,

6192-578: Is spent in their creation and their uniqueness is valued. For the folklorist, these hand-crafted objects embody multifaceted relationships in the lives of the craftspeople and the users, a concept that has been lost with mass-produced items that have no connection to an individual craftsperson. Many traditional crafts, such as ironworking and glass-making, have been elevated to the fine or applied arts and taught in art schools; or they have been repurposed as folk art , characterized as objects whose decorative form supersedes their utilitarian needs. Folk art

6336-403: Is still transmitted orally and, indeed, continues to be generated in new forms and variants at an alarming rate. Below is listed a small sampling of types and examples of verbal lore. The genre of material culture includes all artifacts that can be touched, held, lived in, or eaten. They are tangible objects with a physical or mental presence, either intended for permanent use or to be used at

6480-669: Is the complex balance of continuity over change in both their design and their decoration. In Europe, prior to the Industrial Revolution , everything was made by hand. While some folklorists of the 19th century wanted to secure the oral traditions of the rural folk before the populace became literate, other folklorists sought to identify hand-crafted objects before their production processes were lost to industrial manufacturing. Just as verbal lore continues to be actively created and transmitted in today's culture, so these handicrafts can still be found all around us, with possibly

6624-430: Is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group frequently passed along by word of mouth. The concept of folk has varied over time. When Thoms first created this term, folk applied only to rural, frequently poor, and illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of folk is a social group that includes two or more people with common traits who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk

6768-480: Is the namesake of the festival of Easter in some languages. The Old English deity Ēostre is attested solely by Bede in his 8th-century work The Reckoning of Time , where Bede states that during Ēosturmōnaþ (the equivalent of April), pagan Anglo-Saxons had held feasts in Ēostre's honour, but that this tradition had died out by his time, replaced by the Christian Paschal month , a celebration of

6912-521: Is therefore a distant cognate of numerous other dawn goddesses attested among Indo-European-speaking peoples, including Uṣás , Ēṓs , and Aurōra . In the words of the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture , "a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn is supported both by the evidence of cognate names and the similarity of mythic representation of the dawn goddess among various Indo-European groups.   [...] All of this evidence permits us to posit

7056-421: Is thus explained: The hare was originally a bird, and was changed into a quadruped by the goddess Ostara; in gratitude to Ostara or Eastre, the hare exercises its original bird function to lay eggs for the goddess on her festal day." According to folklorist Stephen Winick, by 1900, many popular sources had picked up the story of Eostre and the hare. One described the story as one of the oldest in mythology, "despite

7200-652: Is translated by most scholars as 'Easter-house', which would parallel the Medieval Flemish Paeshuys ('Easter-house'). Frankish historian Einhard also writes in his Vita Karoli Magni (early 9th century CE) that after Charlemagne defeated and converted the continental Saxons to Christianity, he gave Germanic names to the Latin months of the year, which included the Easter-month Ostarmanoth . The Old English Ēostre

7344-540: Is used in discussions of material lore. Both formulations offer different perspectives on the same folkloric understanding, specifically that folklore artifacts need to remain embedded in their cultural environment if we are to gain insight into their meaning for the community. The concept of cultural (folklore) performance is shared with ethnography and anthropology among other social sciences. The cultural anthropologist Victor Turner identified four universal characteristics of cultural performance: playfulness, framing ,

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7488-428: Is used to confirm and reinforce the identity of the group. It can be used both internally within the group to express their common identity, for example in an initiation ceremony for new members. It can also be used externally to differentiate the group from outsiders, like a folk dance demonstration at a community festival. Significant to folklorists here is that there are two opposing but equally valid ways to use this in

7632-672: The Austriates . The name of these goddesses certainly derives from the stem austri -, which, if Germanic, would be cognate with the Old English Eostre , although the goddesses might equally have developed entirely independently. Ēosturmōnaþ ('Ēostre's month') was the Anglo-Saxon name for the month of April. In chapter 15 ( De mensibus Anglorum , 'The English months') of his 8th-century work De temporum ratione (" The Reckoning of Time "), Bede describes

7776-842: The Bicentennial Celebration , folkloristics in the United States came of age. "…[Folklife] means the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual, pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benefit of formal instruction or institutional direction." Added to

7920-656: The Coptic Orthodox Church , and among Western Christians observing the Daniel Fast . A common practice in England during the medieval Christian era was for children to go door-to-door begging for eggs on the Saturday before Lent began. People handed out eggs as special treats for children to enjoy prior to the Lenten fast; people then abstained from eggs throughout Lent and could enjoy them once again with

8064-792: The East Riding of Yorkshire . The element * ēoster also appears in the Old English name Easterwine , a name borne by Bede's monastery abbot in Wearmouth–Jarrow and which appears an additional three times in the Durham Liber Vitae . The name Aestorhild also appears in the Liber Vitae , and is likely the ancestor of the Middle English name Estrild . Various continental Germanic names include

8208-542: The East Semitic theonym Ishtar by way of folk etymology . For example, from The Two Babylons , third edition: What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte , one of the titles of Beltis , the queen of heaven , whose name, as pronounced by the people of Ninevah , was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. This name as found by Layard on

8352-618: The Easter tale which preachers told from the pulpit for the people's amusement, connecting it with Christian reminiscences. Grimm commented on further Easter time customs, including unique sword dances and particular baked goods ("pastry of heathenish form"). In addition, Grimm weighed a potential connection to the Slavic spring goddess Vesna and the Lithuanian Vasara . According to anthropologist Krystal D'Costa, there

8496-619: The Halloween celebration of the 21st century is not the All Hallows' Eve of the Middle Ages and even gives rise to its own set of urban legends independent of the historical celebration; the cleansing rituals of Orthodox Judaism were originally good public health in a land with little water, but now these customs signify for some people identification as an Orthodox Jew. By comparison, a common action such as tooth brushing , which

8640-616: The Historic–Geographic Method , a methodology that dominated folkloristics in the first half of the 20th century. When William Thoms first published his appeal to document the verbal lore of the rural populations, it was believed these folk artifacts would die out as the population became literate. Over the past two centuries, this belief has proven to be wrong; folklorists continue to collect verbal lore in both written and spoken form from all social groups. Some variants might have been captured in published collections, but much of it

8784-566: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival celebrated each summer on the Mall in Washington, DC. A fourth category includes customs related to folk beliefs . Walking under a ladder is just one of many symbols considered unlucky . Occupational groups tend to have a rich history of customs related to their life and work, so the traditions of sailors or lumberjacks . The area of ecclesiastical folklore , which includes modes of worship not sanctioned by

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8928-657: The blood of Christ , shed as at that time of his crucifixion." The Ukrainian art of decorating eggs, known as pysanky . Similar variants of this form of artwork are seen among other eastern and central European cultures. The idea of an egg-giving hare went to the U.S. in the 18th century. Protestant German immigrants in the Pennsylvania Dutch area told their children about the " Osterhase " (sometimes spelled " Oschter Haws " ). Hase means "hare", not rabbit, and in Northwest European folklore

9072-463: The resurrection of Jesus . Additionally, scholars have linked the goddess's name to a variety of Germanic personal names, a series of location names ( toponyms ), and, discovered in 1958, over 150 inscriptions from the 2nd century CE referring to the matronae Austriahenae , goddesses with connected names venerated on the European continent. By way of linguistic reconstruction , the matter of

9216-498: The "Easter Bunny" indeed is a hare . According to the legend, only good children received gifts of colored eggs in the nests that they made in their caps and bonnets before Easter. In a publication from 1874 German philologist Adolf Holtzmann stated "The Easter Hare is unintelligible to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara ". The connection between Easter and that goddess had been made by Jacob Grimm in his 1835 Deutsche Mythologie . This proposed association

9360-655: The "naughty or nice" list made by Santa Claus . As part of the legend, the creature carries colored eggs in its basket, as well as candy, and sometimes toys, to the homes of children. As such, the Easter Bunny again shows similarities to Santa (or the Christkind ) and Christmas by bringing gifts to children on the night before a holiday. The custom was first mentioned in Georg Franck von Franckenau 's De ovis paschalibus ("About Easter Eggs") in 1682, referring to

9504-500: The American Folklore Society brought the behavioral approach into open debate among folklorists. In 1972 Richard Dorson called out the "young Turks" for their movement toward a behavioral approach to folklore. This approach "shifted the conceptualization of folklore as an extractable item or 'text' to an emphasis on folklore as a kind of human behavior and communication. Conceptualizing folklore as behavior redefined

9648-612: The Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre, but there is no shred of evidence for this; Bede , the only writer to mention Ēostre , does not link her with any animal". A legend often encountered in contemporary times is that Eostre freed a frozen bird from a tree branch by turning it into a hare. It still continued to lay eggs but, having no use for them anymore and in gratitude to the goddess, gave them away. This has no basis in any authentic, pre-Christian folklore, myth or religion and only appears to date from 1883, first published by K. A. Oberle in

9792-539: The Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar. Because Hislop's claims have no linguistics foundation, his claims were rejected, but the Two Babylons would go on to have some influence in popular culture. In the 2000s, a popular Internet meme similarly claimed an incorrect linguistic connection between English Easter and Ishtar . The name has been adopted for an asteroid ( 343 Ostara , 1892 by Max Wolf ), In music,

9936-589: The Biblical pascha ; even Ulphilas writes 𐍀𐌰𐍃𐌺𐌰 , not 𐌰𐌿𐍃𐍄𐍂𐍉 ( paska not áustrô ), though he must have known the word". Grimm details that the Old High German adverb ôstar "expresses movement towards the rising sun", as did the Old Norse term austr , and potentially also Anglo-Saxon ēastor and Gothic * 𐌰𐌿𐍃𐍄𐍂 ( * áustr ). Grimm compares these terms to

10080-599: The Common Germanic divinity at the origin of the Old English Ēostre and the Old High German * Ôstara . Theories connecting Ēostre with records of Germanic Easter customs , including hares and eggs , have been proposed. Whether the goddess was an invention of Bede has been a debate among some scholars, particularly prior to the discovery of the matronae Austriahenae and further developments in Indo-European studies . Due to these latter developments, she

10224-535: The Germanic and Baltic languages replaced the old formation * h₂éws-os , the name of the PIE dawn-goddess , with a form in * -reh₂- , likewise found in the Lithuanian deity Aušrinė . In Anglo-Saxon England , her springtime festival gave its name to a month (Northumbrian: Ēosturmōnaþ , West Saxon: Eastermonað ), the rough equivalent of April, then to the Christian feast of Easter that eventually displaced it. In southern Medieval Germany,

10368-537: The Goddess of Media ( Gillian Anderson ) and capitalising on the Christian holiday. Odin ( Ian McShane ) forces her to accept that those who celebrate Easter are worshipping Jesus and not her, causing her to join his rebellion against the New Gods. In 1853, Scottish protestant minister Alexander Hislop published The Two Babylons , an anti-Catholic tract. In the tract, Hislop connects modern English Easter with

10512-561: The History and Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society and concerned with the connections of folklore with history, as well as the history of folklore studies. Lacking context, folklore artifacts would be uninspiring objects without any life of their own. It is only through performance that the artifacts come alive as an active and meaningful component of a social group; the intergroup communication arises in

10656-537: The Second World War, folklorists began to articulate a more holistic approach toward their subject matter. In tandem with the growing sophistication in the social sciences , attention was no longer limited to the isolated artifact, but extended to include the artifact embedded in an active cultural environment. One early proponent was Alan Dundes with his essay "Texture, Text and Context", first published 1964. A public presentation in 1967 by Dan Ben-Amos at

10800-603: The United States, felt a need to capture the unstructured and unsupervised street life and activities of children before it was lost. This fear proved to be unfounded. In a comparison of any modern school playground during recess and the painting of "Children's Games" by Pieter Breugel the Elder we can see that the activity level is similar, and many of the games from the 1560 painting are recognizable and comparable to modern variations still played today. These same artifacts of childlore, in innumerable variations, also continue to serve

10944-671: The Virgin and Christ Child . It may also have been associated with the Holy Trinity , as in the three hares motif. In Christianity , for the celebration of Eastertide, Easter eggs symbolize the empty tomb of Jesus , from which Jesus was resurrected . Eggs became associated with Easter specifically when eating them was prohibited during the fast of Lent , when believers abstaned from meat and animal products—a practice that continues in certain Christian denominations today, such as

11088-595: The ancient Teutonic goddess Ostara (the Anglo-Saxon Eàstre or Eostre, as Bede calls her) transformed into a quadruped. For this reason the Hare, in grateful recollection of its former quality as bird and swift messenger of the Spring-Goddess, is able to lay eggs on her festival at Easter-time. Folklore Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression . Just as essential as

11232-413: The artifacts and turn them into something else; so Old McDonald's farm is transformed from animal noises to the scatological version of animal poop. This childlore is characterized by "its lack of dependence on literary and fixed form. Children…operate among themselves in a world of informal and oral communication, unimpeded by the necessity of maintaining and transmitting information by written means". This

11376-423: The business community, but also from federal and state organizations for these local street parties. Paradoxically, in parading diversity within the community, these events have come to authenticate true community, where business interests ally with the varied (folk) social groups to promote the interests of the community as a whole. This is just a small sampling of types and examples of customary lore. Childlore

11520-529: The community as knowledgeable in their traditional lore. They are not the anonymous "folk", the nameless mass without of history or individuality. The audience of this performance is the other half in the transmission process; they listen, watch, and remember. Few of them will become active tradition-bearers; many more will be passive tradition-bearers who maintain a memory of this specific traditional artifact, in both its presentation and its content. Ostara Ēostre ( Proto-Germanic : * Austrō(n) )

11664-457: The complexity of the interpretation, the birthday party for a seven-year-old will not be identical to the birthday party for that same child as a six-year-old, even though they follow the same model. For each artifact embodies a single variant of a performance in a given time and space. The task of the folklorist becomes to identify within this surfeit of variables the constants and the expressed meaning that shimmer through all variations: honoring of

11808-569: The conclusion of Lent at the arrival of Easter Sunday. As a special dish, eggs have been decorated by Christians as part of the Easter celebrations. Eggs boiled with some flowers change their color, bringing the spring into the homes, and some over time added the custom of decorating the eggs . Many Christians of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodox Church to this day typically dye their Easter eggs red "in memory of

11952-472: The continent is a single example of an ethnic group parading their separateness (differential behavior ), and encouraging Americans of all stripes to show alliance to this colorful ethnic group. These festivals and parades, with a target audience of people who do not belong to the social group, intersect with the interests and mission of public folklorists , who are engaged in the documentation, preservation, and presentation of traditional forms of folklife. With

12096-531: The custom to Britain and America where it evolved into the Easter Bunny ." A holiday named for the goddess is part of the neopagan Wiccan Wheel of the Year (Ostara, 21 March). In some forms of modern Germanic paganism , Ēostre (or Ostara) is venerated. Regarding this veneration, Carole M. Cusack comments that, among adherents, Ēostre is "associated with the coming of spring and the dawn, and her festival

12240-609: The custom, either as performer or audience, signifies acknowledgment of that social group. Some customary behavior is intended to be performed and understood only within the group itself, so the handkerchief code sometimes used in the gay community or the initiation rituals of the Freemasons. Other customs are designed specifically to represent a social group to outsiders, those who do not belong to this group. The St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York and in other communities across

12384-488: The dawn, were carried by hares. And she certainly represented spring fecundity , and love and carnal pleasure that leads to fecundity." Boyle responded that nothing is known about Ēostre outside of Bede's single passage, that the authors had seemingly accepted the identification of Ēostre with the Norse goddess Freyja, yet that the hare is not associated with Freyja either. Boyle writes that "her carriage, we are told by Snorri ,

12528-438: The dawn: Nevertheless, my main objection is that Shaw fails to offer any explanation as to why his local group-specific goddess would have been celebrated at that particular time of year. Shaw sees no reason to doubt Bede's claim that Eosturmonath was named after the goddess Eostre, and finds it hard to believe that Bede would have invented such an explanation given his reputation as a careful researcher (Shaw 2012), yet he ignores

12672-456: The defining features a challenge. While this classification is essential for the subject area of folkloristics, it remains just labeling and adds little to an understanding of the traditional development and meaning of the artifacts themselves. Necessary as they are, genre classifications are misleading in their oversimplification of the subject area. Folklore artifacts are never self-contained, they do not stand in isolation but are particulars in

12816-527: The developmental function of this childlore, the artifacts themselves have been in play for centuries. Below is listed just a small sampling of types and examples of childlore and games. A case has been made for considering folk history as a distinct sub-category of folklore, an idea that has received attention from such folklorists as Richard Dorson. This field of study is represented in The Folklore Historian , an annual journal sponsored by

12960-605: The divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could be easily adapted by the resurrection-day of the Christian's God. Bonfires were lighted at Easter and according to popular belief of long standing, the moment the sun rises on Easter Sunday morning, he gives three joyful leaps , he dances for joy   [...] Water drawn on the Easter morning is, like that at Christmas, holy and healing   [...] here also heathen notions seems to have grafted themselves on great Christian festivals. Maidens clothed in white, who at Easter, at

13104-418: The element, including Austrechild , Austrighysel, Austrovald , and Ostrulf . In 1958, over 150 Romano-Germanic votive inscriptions to the matronae Austriahenae , a triad of goddesses, were discovered near Morken-Harff , Germany. They are datable to around 150–250 CE. Most of these inscriptions are in an incomplete state, yet many are at least reasonably legible. Some of these inscriptions refer to

13248-410: The established church tends to be so large and complex that it is usually treated as a specialized area of folk customs; it requires considerable expertise in standard church ritual in order to adequately interpret folk customs and beliefs that originated in official church practice. Customary folklore is always a performance, be it a single gesture or a complex of scripted customs, and participating in

13392-478: The evidence of their illustrations." The earliest evidence for the Easter Hare ( Osterhase ) was recorded in south-west Germany in 1678 by the professor of medicine Georg Franck von Franckenau , but it remained unknown in other parts of Germany until the 18th century. Scholar Richard Sermon writes that "hares were frequently seen in gardens in spring, and thus may have served as a convenient explanation for

13536-434: The extensive array of other legislation designed to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the United States, this law also marks a shift in national awareness. It gives voice to a growing understanding that cultural diversity is a national strength and a resource worthy of protection. Paradoxically, it is a unifying feature, not something that separates the citizens of a country. "We no longer view cultural difference as

13680-435: The fact that it was then less than twenty years old." Some scholars have further linked customs and imagery involving hares to both Ēostre and the Norse goddess Freyja . Writing in 1972, John Andrew Boyle cited commentary contained within an etymology dictionary by A. Ernout and A. Meillet , where the authors write that "Little else   [...] is known about [Ēostre], but it has been suggested that her lights, as goddess of

13824-403: The festival Ôstarûn similarly gave its name to the month Ôstarmânôth , and to the modern feast of Ostern ('Easter'), suggesting that a goddess named *Ôstara was also worshipped there. The name of the month survived into 18th-century German as Ostermonat . An Old Saxon equivalent of the spring goddess named *Āsteron may also be reconstructed from the term asteronhus , which

13968-496: The first classification system for folktales in 1910. This was later expanded into the Aarne–Thompson classification system by Stith Thompson and remains the standard classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. As the number of classified oral artifacts grew, similarities were noted in items that had been collected from very different geographic regions, ethnic groups, and epochs, giving rise to

14112-477: The first of them is justified by clear traces in the vocabularies of Germanic tribes." Specifically regarding Ēostre, Grimm continues that: We Germans to this day call April ostermonat , and ôstarmânoth is found as early as Eginhart ( temp. Car. Mag. ). The great Christian festival, which usually falls in April or the end of March, bears in the oldest of OHG remains the name ôstarâ   [...] it

14256-416: The form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain from a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts . Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another, either through verbal instruction or demonstration. The academic study of folklore

14400-411: The generations and subject to the same forces of conservative tradition and individual variation" that are found in all folk artifacts. Folklorists are interested in the physical form, the method of manufacture or construction, the pattern of use, as well as the procurement of the raw materials. The meaning to those who both make and use these objects is important. Of primary significance in these studies

14544-504: The goddess Eostre transformed a bird into an egg-laying hare. A response to a question about the origins of Easter hares in the 8 June 1889 issue of the journal American Notes and Queries stated: "In Germany and among the Pennsylvania Germans toy rabbits or hares made of canton flannel stuffed with cotton are given as gifts on Easter morning. The children are told that this Osh’ter has laid the Easter eggs. This curious idea

14688-720: The goddess name Ēostre. The Council of Austerfield called by King Aldfrith of Northumbria shortly before 704 convened at a place described in contemporary records both as in campo qui Eostrefeld dicitur and in campo qui dicitur Oustraefelda , which have led to the site's being identified with Austerfield near Bawtry in South Yorkshire . Such locations also include Eastry ( Eastrgena , 788 CE) in Kent , Eastrea ( Estrey , 966 CE) in Cambridgeshire , and Eastrington ( Eastringatun , 959 CE) in

14832-452: The goddess's name to a variety of Germanic personal names, a series of location names ( toponyms ) in England, and, discovered in 1958, over 150 inscriptions from the 2nd–3rd century CE referring to the matronae Austriahenae . A cluster of place names in England and a variety of English and continental Germanic names include the element * ēoster , an early Old English word reconstructed by linguists and potentially an earlier form of

14976-474: The identical Latin term auster , and contends that the cult of the goddess may have been centred around an Old Norse form, Austra , or that her cult may have already been extinct by the time of Christianization. Grimm notes that the Old Norse Prose Edda book Gylfaginning attests to a male being called Austri , whom he describes as a "spirit of light." Grimm comments that

15120-528: The indigenous month names of the English people. After describing the worship of the goddess Rheda during the Anglo-Saxon month of Hrēþ-mōnaþ , Bede writes about Ēosturmōnaþ , the month of the goddess Ēostre: Eostur-monath , qui nunc Paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a Dea illorum quæ Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit: a cujus nomine nunc Paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquæ observationis vocabulo gaudia novæ solemnitatis vocantes. Eosturmonath has

15264-404: The individual within the circle of family and friends, gifting to express their value and worth to the group, and of course, the festival food and drink as signifiers of the event. The formal definition of verbal lore is words, both written and oral, that are "spoken, sung, voiced forms of traditional utterance that show repetitive patterns." Crucial here are the repetitive patterns. Verbal lore

15408-417: The items were used, with actors reenacting the everyday lives of people from all segments of society, relying heavily on the material artifacts of a pre-industrial society. Many locations even duplicate the processing of the objects, thus creating new objects of an earlier historic time period. Living museums are now found throughout the world as part of a thriving heritage industry . This list represents just

15552-431: The job of folklorists..." Folklore became a verb, an action, something that people do, not just something that they have. It is in the performance and the active context that folklore artifacts get transmitted in informal, direct communication, either verbally or in demonstration. Performance includes all the different modes and manners in which this transmission occurs. Transmission is a communicative process requiring

15696-408: The language of a folklore performance. Material culture requires some moulding to turn it into a performance. Should we consider the performance of the creation of the artifact, as in a quilting party, or the performance of the recipients who use the quilt to cover their marriage bed? Here the language of context works better to describe the quilting of patterns copied from the grandmother, quilting as

15840-478: The most part self-explanatory, these categories include physical objects ( material folklore ), common sayings, expressions, stories and songs ( verbal folklore ), and beliefs and ways of doing things ( customary folklore ). There is also a fourth major subgenre defined for children's folklore and games ( childlore ), as the collection and interpretation of this fertile topic is particular to school yards and neighborhood streets. Each of these genres and their subtypes

15984-431: The name Ostara has been adopted as a name by the musical group Ostara , and as the names of albums by :zoviet*france: ( Eostre , 1984) and The Wishing Tree ( Ostara , 2009). Politically, the name of Ostara was in the early 20th century invoked as the name of a German nationalist magazine , book series and publishing house established in 1905 at Mödling , Austria . Sermon, Richard (2022). "Eostre and

16128-552: The names of the native goddesses of the Anglo-Saxons, "who were hardly extinct in his lifetime." According to philologist Rudolf Simek in 1984, despite expressions of doubts, Bede's account of Ēostre should not be disregarded. Simek opined that a "spring-like fertility goddess" must be assumed rather than a "goddess of sunrise" regardless of the name, reasoning that "otherwise the Germanic goddesses (and matrons ) are mostly connected with prosperity and growth". Simek pointed to

16272-411: The necessary beat to complex physical rhythms and movements, be it hand-clapping, jump roping, or ball bouncing. Furthermore, many physical games are used to develop strength, coordination and endurance of the players. For some team games, negotiations about the rules can run on longer than the game itself as social skills are rehearsed. Even as we are just now uncovering the neuroscience that undergirds

16416-460: The next meal. Most of these folklore artifacts are single objects that have been created by hand for a specific purpose; however, folk artifacts can also be mass-produced, such as dreidels or Christmas decorations. These items continue to be considered folklore because of their long (pre-industrial) history and their customary use. All of these material objects "existed prior to and continue alongside mechanized industry. … [They are] transmitted across

16560-519: The one piece of evidence Bede provides about her cult: the timing of her month and celebrations. If we accept that the month name combines two elements meaning 'east' or 'eastern' and 'month', then the appearance of the equinoctial sunrise and its nearest full-moonrise, in their most easterly positions on the horizon, provide a logical explanation for both the timing and etymology of Eosturmonath. Thus, Shaw's theory cannot be said to have 'done away' with any arguments connecting Eostre—the goddess Bede tells us

16704-495: The origin of the colored eggs hidden there for children. Alternatively, there is a European tradition that hares laid eggs, since a hare's scratch or form and a lapwing 's nest look very similar, and both occur on grassland and are first seen in the spring. In the nineteenth century the influence of Easter cards, toys, and books was to make the Easter Hare/Rabbit popular throughout Europe. German immigrants then exported

16848-491: The past that continued to exist within the lower strata of society. The " Kinder- und Hausmärchen " of the Brothers Grimm (first published 1812) is the best known but by no means only collection of verbal folklore of the European peasantry of that time. This interest in stories, sayings, and songs continued throughout the 19th century and aligned the fledgling discipline of folkloristics with literature and mythology. By

16992-531: The performance and this is where transmission of these cultural elements takes place. American folklorist Roger D. Abrahams has described it thus: "Folklore is folklore only when performed. As organized entities of performance, items of folklore have a sense of control inherent in them, a power that can be capitalized upon and enhanced through effective performance." Without transmission, these items are not folklore, they are just individual quirky tales and objects. This understanding in folkloristics only occurred in

17136-506: The period of romantic nationalism in Europe. A particular figure in this development was Johann Gottfried von Herder , whose writings in the 1770s presented oral traditions as organic processes grounded in the locale. After the German states were invaded by Napoleonic France , Herder's approach was adopted by many of his fellow Germans, who systematized the recorded folk traditions and used them in their process of nation building . This process

17280-681: The question of whether Bede invented the deity. In 1892, Charles J. Billson noted that scholars before his writing were divided about the existence of Bede's account of Ēostre, stating that "among authorities who have no doubt as to her existence are W. Grimm , Wackernagel , Sinrock [ sic ], and Wolf. On the other hand, Weinhold rejects the idea on philological grounds, and so do Heinrich Leo and Hermann Oesre. Kuhn says, 'The Anglo-Saxon Eostre looks like an invention of Bede;' and Mannhardt also dismisses her as an etymological dea ex machina ." Billson wrote that "the whole question turns   [...] upon Bede's credibility", and that "one

17424-408: The rural poor as folk. The common feature in this expanded definition of folk was their identification as the underclass of society. Moving forward into the 20th century, in tandem with new thinking in the social sciences , folklorists also revised and expanded their concept of the folk group. By the 1960s, it was understood that social groups , i.e., folk groups, were all around us; each individual

17568-399: The sacredness of this animal reaches back into an age still more remote, where it is probably a very important part of the great Spring Festival of the prehistoric inhabitants of this island." Adolf Holtzmann had also speculated that "the hare must once have been a bird, because it lays eggs" in modern German folklore. From this statement, numerous later sources built a modern legend in which

17712-420: The same function of learning and practicing skills needed for growth. So bouncing and swinging rhythms and rhymes encourage development of balance and coordination in infants and children. Verbal rhymes like Peter Piper picked... serve to increase both the oral and aural acuity of children. Songs and chants, accessing a different part of the brain, are used to memorize series ( Alphabet song ). They also provide

17856-415: The season of returning spring, show themselves in clefts of the rock and on mountains, are suggestive of the ancient goddess. In the second volume of Deutsche Mythologie , Grimm picked up the subject of Ostara again, speculating on possible connections between the goddess and various German Easter customs, including Easter eggs: But if we admit, goddesses, then, in addition to Nerthus , Ostara has

18000-410: The second half of the 20th century, when the two terms " folklore performance " and "text and context" dominated discussions among folklorists. These terms are not contradictory or even mutually exclusive. As borrowings from other fields of study, one or the other linguistic formulation is more appropriate to any given discussion. Performance is frequently tied to verbal and customary lore, whereas context

18144-521: The self-representation of a community. Different genres are frequently combined with each other to mark an event. So a birthday celebration might include a song or formulaic way of greeting the birthday child (verbal), presentation of a cake and wrapped presents (material), as well as customs to honor the individual, such as sitting at the head of the table and blowing out the candles with a wish. There might also be special games played at birthday parties, which are not generally played at other times. Adding to

18288-444: The sophisticated world of adults, and quite as little affected by it. Of particular interest to folklorists here is the mode of transmission of these artifacts; this lore circulates exclusively within an informal pre-literate children's network or folk group. It does not include artifacts taught to children by adults. However children can take the taught and teach it further to other children, turning it into childlore. Or they can take

18432-403: The speaker has just thought up within the current context. Another example is the child's song Old MacDonald Had a Farm , where each performance is distinctive in the animals named, their order, and their sounds. Songs such as this are used to express cultural values (farms are important, farmers are old and weather-beaten) and teach children about different domesticated animals. Verbal folklore

18576-418: The strongest claim to consideration. To what we said on [page] 290 I can add some significant facts. The heathen Easter had much in common with May-feast and the reception of spring, particularly in the matter of bonfires. Then, through long ages there seem to have lingered among the people Easter-games so-called, which the church itself had to tolerate: I allude especially to the custom of Easter eggs , and to

18720-412: The study of a group: you can start with an identified group in order to explore its folklore, or you can identify folklore items and use them to identify the social group. Beginning in the 1960s, a further expansion of the concept of folk began to unfold through the study of folklore. Individual researchers identified folk groups that had previously been overlooked and ignored. One notable example of this

18864-405: The study of folklore is "concerned with the study of traditional culture, or the unofficial culture" that is the folk culture, "as opposed to the elite culture, not for the sake of proving a thesis but to learn about the mass of [humanity] overlooked by the conventional disciplines." Individual folklore artifacts are commonly classified as one of three types: material, verbal or customary lore. For

19008-470: The study of folklore. With the increasing theoretical sophistication of the social sciences , it has become evident that folklore is a naturally occurring and necessary component of any social group; it is indeed all around us. Folklore does not have to be old or antiquated; it continues to be created and transmitted, and in any group, it is used to differentiate between "us" and "them." Folklore began to distinguish itself as an autonomous discipline during

19152-420: The topic, there are "four functions to folklore": The folk of the 19th century, the social group identified in the original term "folklore" , was characterized by being rural, illiterate, and poor. They were the peasants living in the countryside, in contrast to the urban populace of the cities. Only toward the end of the century did the urban proletariat (on the coattails of Marxist theory) become included with

19296-478: The totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. This distinction aligned American folkloristics with cultural anthropology and ethnology , using the same techniques of data collection in their field research. This divided alliance of folkloristics between the humanities in Europe and the social sciences in America offers a wealth of theoretical vantage points and research tools to the field of folkloristics as

19440-464: The turn of the 20th century, the number and sophistication of folklore studies and folklorists had grown both in Europe and North America. Whereas European folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogenous peasant populations in their regions, the American folklorists, led by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict , chose to consider Native American cultures in their research, and included

19584-432: The use of symbolic language, and employing the subjunctive mood . In viewing the performance, the audience leaves the daily reality to move into a mode of make-believe, or "what if?" It is self-evident that this fits well with all types of verbal lore, where reality has no place among the symbols, fantasies, and nonsense of traditional tales, proverbs, and jokes. Customs and the lore of children and games also fit easily into

19728-688: The utility of the object. Before the Second World War , folk artifacts had been understood and collected as cultural shards of an earlier time. They were considered individual vestigial artifacts, with little or no function in the contemporary culture. Given this understanding, the goal of the folklorist was to capture and document them before they disappeared. They were collected with no supporting data, bound in books, archived and classified more or less successfully. The Historic–Geographic Method worked to isolate and track these collected artifacts, mostly verbal lore, across space and time. Following

19872-484: The worship of Ēostre. In his late 19th-century study of the hare in folk custom and mythology, Charles J. Billson cited numerous incidents of folk customs involving hares around the Easter season in Northern Europe. Billson said that "whether there was a goddess named Ēostre, or not, and whatever connection the hare may have had with the ritual of Saxon or British worship, there are good grounds for believing that

20016-478: Was drawn by a pair of cats – animals, it is true, which like hares were the familiars of witches, with whom Freyja seems to have much in common." However, Boyle adds that "on the other hand, when the authors speak of the hare as the 'companion of Aphrodite and of satyrs and cupids ' and point out that 'in the Middle Ages it appears beside the figure of Luxuria ', they are on much surer ground and can adduce

20160-437: Was enthusiastically embraced by smaller nations, like Finland, Estonia, and Hungary, which were seeking political independence from their dominant neighbors. Folklore, as a field of study, further developed among 19th-century European scholars, who were contrasting tradition with the newly developing modernity . Its focus was the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations, which were considered as residues and survivals of

20304-422: Was for children to go door-to-door begging for eggs on the Saturday before Lent began. People handed out eggs as special treats for children prior to their fast. In Northern Europe, Easter imagery often involves hares and rabbits . The first scholar to make a connection between the goddess Eostre and hares was Adolf Holtzmann in his book Deutsche Mythologie . Holtzmann wrote of the tradition, "the Easter Hare

20448-552: Was repeated by other authors including Charles Isaac Elton and Charles J. Billson. In 1961 Christina Hole wrote, "The hare was the sacred beast of Eastre (or Ēostre ), a Saxon goddess of Spring and of the dawn." The belief that Ēostre had a hare companion who became the Easter Bunny was popularized when it was presented as fact in the BBC documentary Shadow of the Hare (1993). The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore however states "nowadays, many writers claim that hares were sacred to

20592-513: Was the original folklore , the artifacts defined by William Thoms as older, oral cultural traditions of the rural populace. In his 1846 published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of verbal lore. By the beginning of the 20th century, these collections had grown to include artifacts from around the world and across several centuries. A system to organize and categorize them became necessary. Antti Aarne published

20736-487: Was worshipped in that month—with the dawn or the spring. In his 1835 Deutsche Mythologie , philologist Jacob Grimm cites comparative evidence to reconstruct a potential continental Germanic goddess whose name would have been preserved in the Old High German name of Easter, * Ostara . Addressing skepticism towards goddesses mentioned by Bede, Grimm comments that "there is nothing improbable in them, nay

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